Greenbelt and all that...
Mark 2 at Greenbelt 1983: Pictures by Denise Hockey |
By now we had travelled the country, playing alongside well-known Christian artists including Sheila Walsh, Amaziah, Chris Eaton, Mark Williamson Band, Garth Hewitt, Nutshell, Steve Turner, Barry Crompton and The Predators. In August 1983, Mark 2 worked as resident band for a few days at the Falmouth Arts Centre in Cornwall. We came off stage one night to hear the terrific news that we had been invited to play at the Greenbelt Arts Festival later that month - in the venue known as the 'Big Top.'
We travelled up to Knebworth and collected our back stage passes. We were scheduled to appear on the final day - August bank holiday Monday, on the Big Top stage, and we arrived early to hear the other bands in the lineup. It was a swelteringly hot day, and inside the marquee it was even hotter, with all the stage lights constantly on and the amplifiers and sound systems cooking away. The band who were on just before us were decidedly average, bless them, but they lost a lot of the audience in the tent, who wandered off to see what else was on show.
Theatrical stuff - Mark 2 in Plymouth 1983 |
Photos by Ian Dent |
'Better is a three track EP from Plymouth band Mark 2. Entitled On Target, the standout track is Wrong Sida Life, which manages to echo half a dozen Top 20 influences without slavishly copying any of them. Steve Wheeler has a good rock 'n' roll voice, the synths work well and this is a band we'll be hearing more of.' (Buzz Magazine August 1983).
Previous posts in this series:
My first gig
Onwards and upwards
Dartmoor prison blues
Mark 2
On Target
Greenbelt and all that... by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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